This one sure counts as an adventure…. Memorial Weekend Sunday we went out with some friends for an afternoon sail and anchored between Chimon and Copps Island off Norwalk. We had picked up some live lobster that morning and were planning to have a nice lobster dinner on the boat when a small mistake in the galley caused a fire, and had I not had the appropriate safety equipment in place, could have ended in a disaster.

To make a log story short, Jen filled and lit the aft/right burner on the 2 burner Origo Alcohol stove, then realized she was going to need both burners going, turned off the knob and lifted the lid to fill the other burner. The problem was that she either didn’t get the knob 100% closed, or she opened the lid before the flame actually died. The important fact here being that she did not verify the flame on the first burner was out before she started to fill the 2nd burner with fuel. The flames flashed over from the first burner to the one she was filling and flared up, burning the knuckle on her thumb pretty bad, (it blistered, but that was luckily the only “severe” injury anyone sustained). She also dropped the open bottle of alcohol, which then let alcohol spill everywhere, and spread the flames from the stove, to the entire galley. She ran out and jumped in the water as the alcohol also spilled onto her dress and it started to burn, but didn’t burn long enough to cause any serious burns to her. Our friend Jay and I by this time were down below and I used one of the fire extinguishers to put out the fire, but not before it did some damage to the wood work in the galley.

We went back and spent Memorial Day cleaning the fire extinguisher dust up from everything to assess the damage. After getting a good look at everything, I filed an insurance claim, and I am meeting with their surveyor this evening to assess the damage.

All the pictures I took are below, I didn’t take any before we started to clean, but I can assure you that it was a huge mess.